This heat problem seems to be an extremely common complaint among 4101 owners. i have this laptop but mine runs cool. however the 4101 boards are full of complaints on this behavior.

Here is a cut and paste from another board where someone has found a solution to the heat problem, perhaps this will fix your problem.

If theres anyone who has NOT installed PowerNow 2.1 on their system, I would do it. It seems to dramatically reduce the heat on the case of the laptop. Now while using windows lightly for even hours on end, the fan never once turns on (except when I start a dvd, then it only comes on every once in a while).

The PowerNow included with the HP laptop is only version 1.5 I believe. You need to get version 2.1 from a different manufacture's support site. I found it on some foreign web site that was getting about 2kbps. If someone wants to host it on a better connection than my web page, PLEASE do because I'm going to pull this in a week or so:

Mine is a Mobile AMD Athlon processor. The PowerNow 2.1 seems to work fine. But the laptop is just far from cool that TRW says. It's hot but now bearable.

By the way guys i couldn't get any review about HP ZE4101 from epinions.com or Amazon.com. Please please let me know the links. I am going to take a print out of these links and take them to Staples and get this Laptop exchanged. What do you think should i exchange this for ? Compaq or Toshiba ?